Which stage do children first show egocentrism and centration?

• A. Sensorimotor stage
• B. Pre-operational stage
• C. Concrete Operations stage
• D. Formal Operations stage

Answer: (B)

Egocentrism and centration appear first in the pre-operational stage. In this stage, roughly ages 2 to 7, children are expanding language and symbolic play but think in a very intuitive, nonlogical way. Egocentrism means they have trouble seeing things from another person’s point of view; they assume everyone experiences the world the same way they do. Centration means they focus on one salient feature of a situation and ignore others—for example, judging the amount of liquid by the height of the liquid in a glass rather than considering the glass’s shape or the actual volume.

These patterns mark this early stage, before children learn to decenter and reason logically about concrete objects, which happens in the next stage. In the subsequent phase, they begin to consider multiple perspectives and remember conservation tasks, moving beyond centration and egocentrism.